s Alaska Native regional, village, and urban corporations have grown and expanded since the early ‘70s, many have taken advantage of traditional knowledge of their lands to build a knowledge base that informs their endeavors across many industries. Particularly for construction projects, the ability of Alaska Native corporations to find local, quality workers and their long history with Alaska’s weather and terrain allows them to successfully complete projects that other companies may not know exactly how to begin.

Additionally, Alaska Native corporations can find efficiencies by leveraging their lands—through quarries or other natural resources—to help project owners get projects done on time and on budget.

Below, we highlight a few projects taken by Alaska Native corporations and/or their subsidiaries across the state that highlight their expertise and their dedication in making sure Alaskans have access to the infrastructure they need.

The city of Emmonak sits on the Yukon River Delta just ten miles from the Bering Sea and about 400 miles northwest of Anchorage and is accessible by the Yukon River or by air. Because of its location, city roads have settlement and subsidence issues, and the city’s port is subject to erosion. Brice Incorporated, a subsidiary of Calista Corporation that specializes in heavy civil construction in remote Alaskan locations, is supplying rock materials for the repair and upgrade of Emmonak city roads and won a contract for the project to expand the city’s port, which is vital to providing necessary supplies to the city and its residents.

The road project began in August 2020 with Brice Inc. mining and barging aggregate rock materials from the cities of Saint Mary’s and Mertarvik on two articulated tug and barges. Once the material arrived, a ground crew performed the upgrades to the city roads, including placement and spreading of aggregate material in order to raise the elevation of the roads and improve drainage. The project was suspended for the winter season and started again this spring, and it’s slated for completion this month.

As a critical infrastructure project, Brice’s upgrade of Emmonak roads took place even while the COVID-19 pandemic shut down much of the world. “We worked with the city to develop a comprehensive COVID-19 mitigation and management plan that would allow our crews in to do the critical work without increasing risk to local residents,” said Project Manager Paul Walsh. “And as a result of those efforts we had no cases of COVID amongst our crews.”

Brice, Inc. was awarded the contract for the Emmonak port expansion in January 2021, with work scheduled to begin by mid-July of this year. The company was contracted to expand the city port along about 600 feet of Yukon riverfront. Project Manager Trent Buron is overseeing the expansion, which includes the placement of sheet pile cells, aggregate fill, and armor stone in order to build a retaining wall to prevent erosion of the new, longer port area. Subcontractor STG Incorporated, also a Calista Corporation subsidiary, will be responsible for installing the sheet pile and providing the necessary crane support. The cranes to place the sheet pile cells, along with all the other equipment and supplies, were barged into the community, and the project is also scheduled to be completed by the end of this month.

Construction of the Atka Health Clinic.

Ahtna, Incorporated

A subsidiary of Ahtna Incorporated, Ahtna Environmental specializes in projects with complex logistics and site conditions. One such project was the Atka Health Clinic design and construction. Atka, a city on a small Aleutian Island of the same name, had a population of just 61 at the 2010 Census, and its residents needed a healthcare provider.

While the original design/build bid took place in September of 2019, the 4,500-square-foot design came in at double Atka’s available funding, so the city canceled the project. Determined to get Atka the clinic it needed, the design/build team of Ahtna Environmental, NorthForm Architecture, and PDC Engineers reached out to the city numerous times in order to come up with a plan that would fit its budget.

Working in good faith for more than a year, the design/build team was able to modify the project enough for it to come in within Atka’s $2.6 million baseline budget amount. The modification was a switch to a modular building rather than a stick-built structure, which reduces costs and better accommodates Alaska’s short construction season and the freight schedule in and out of the remote island.

Completed at the end of July, the project certainly took advantage of Ahtna Engineer’s expertise with complex logistics. Before construction began, the design/build team had to come up with a plan for placing the modular components of the building. While these would normally have been placed with a crane, doing this on Atka would have been prohibitively expensive because the crane that would only have been needed for two weeks would have sat on the island for eight to nine months due to shipping schedules.

Knowing they needed to be innovative, the Ahtna Engineering design/build team camp up with a plan to use a 988 loader to set the modular buildings in place. “We then worked with Coastal Transportation out of Seattle, who agreed to build a special ramp for the project capable of loading and off-loading heavy equipment in remote Alaska locations as long as we used them for shipping all project supplies,” says Ahtna Environmental’s Senior Program Manager Michael Selhay. A win/win for both companies, it provided Ahtna Environmental with a way to make equipment do more work and opened a new market for Coastal Transportation.

Another challenge was remining 3,000 yards of classified fill for the building site. Ahtna was told the fill was mined and available but discovered it hadn’t been mined correctly for use, so the design/build team worked hand-in-hand with the city of Atka in order to remine the fill and minimize monetary damages to the city.

This year Ahtna Environmental also completed the replacement of a jet fuel pipeline at US Coast Guard Base Kodiak Site 3. A major shore installation of the Coast Guard, Base Kodiak sits on Kodiak Island about 250 miles southwest of Anchorage. In a 2018 project, Ahtna excavated and replaced the contaminated soil around a fuel pipeline that had been temporarily repaired more than a decade ago. Then in September 2020, the company was awarded the contract to replace the more than thirty-year-old fuel pipeline because of an EPA requirement.

Ahtna Environmental performs work at USCG Base Kodiak.

Ahtna, Incorporated

A crane barged to Emmonak.

Brice, Inc.

Brice, Inc. works on the repair and upgrade of roads in Emmonak.

Brice, Inc.

Field work began on May 1, 2021 and required coordination between the EPA, the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, the Coast Guard, and Ahtna Environmental—as well as several subcontractors and consultants. “What could have been problematic with so many players actually went very smoothly,” says Ahtna Senior Project Manager Justin Dunn. “High traffic patterns on base were problematic, but Ahtna solved the issue by turning the replacement into a phased program in order to allow for traffic access.”

The project included the replacement of the fuel pipeline as well as paving and work in the fuel pump buildings on holding tanks and fuel pump systems. Ahtna Senior BD/Marketing Group Manager Lori Kropidlowski attributes the smoothness and success of the project to the great communication skills of all involved parties.

Located about 20 minutes outside Anchorage, Eklutna, Incorporated is the largest landowner in the Municipality and represents more than 170 shareholders; it also manages investments in commercial properties and residential developments. Recently, the corporation located a gravel and rock source on its lands and turned it into a business, gaining economic benefit for its shareholders. Eklutna opened a gravel pit, a rock quarry, and a waste dump—all close to Anchorage.

In 2019, Eklutna supplied about 50,000 tons of armor rock out of its quarry to the Port of Alaska rehabilitation project. A vital piece of infrastructure, the port is being repaired due to tides and erosion.

In 2020, Eklutna supplied all of the blanket rock for Anchorage’s Highland Landfill. Essentially, the rock is used on top of a rubber liner to protect the liner and prevent any waste from leaching into the soil—it’s a specific gradation rock that has to be crushed and washed before being put down. “It took us most of the season to make that rock,” says Dick Weldin, director of mining for Eklutna.

Also in 2020, Eklutna provided all of the gravel for a Kiewit Construction project that involved upgrading a bridge on the main highway into Anchorage. The Kiewit project was Phase II of the South Eagle River Bridge Project.

More recently, Eklutna Construction and Maintenance, a subsidiary of the main corporation, has been completing earthquake repair work on military buildings in conjunction with the US Army Corps of Engineers. Damaged in the November 2018 7.1 earthquake, the company is working on three old military warehouse buildings that measure 1,000 feet long by 250 feet wide on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, a joint army and air force facility in Anchorage. Everything above grade on the three buildings is being repaired, including poured concrete and concrete block walls, says Bill Doss, general manager at Eklutna.